Bird Droppings April 19, 2012

Sometimes in a crash

 

When we first moved to our house nearly six years ago our internet provider was a fickle one. Today all was well and tomorrow who knows. Sometimes during a storm service would go out and I would call India or should I say customer service and for over an hour try and explain I needed the reconnect code for the main switch on our junction box. The customer service representative would continue their template sire we must go through this step first. After a million calls I memorized the template and would start answering question before they were asked. Yes, No 13245, 54632, A123, no, yes, no and the representative would get flustered and send me to a supervisor which is what I asked for to start over thirty minutes prior. The supervisor would apologize and give me the new four digit code to connect to the junction box. Now our service calls are fewer and the first message is your call will be answered by someone in the Continental United States. My issue today is not outsourcing but the event that all of this led to six years ago.

 I am always amazed at how we can be redirected many years ago I wrote for nearly an hour and a computer lock up froze and stole my notes. Several really good thoughts were in process. Last Thursday I got home and sat down pulled up the internet and poof it was gone. My first check was did I pay the bill which I had, I checked the phone out as well, not a good sign, suddenly a knock at the door and a dirt covered construction worker asked if I knew what this cable was they just cut. He said it looks old probably not anything. I informed him our phone and internet just went out and walked over to see a one inch cable in two pieces. I was in the middle of writing about Neil Young and rap music, of differences in styles and speakers and amps and ambiguity of rap and stepping stones and the Toccoa creek and stepping stones and getting wet falling in the stream.

 

“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”  Albert Einstein

 

I have written about Albert numerous times  and how this man is known for his theories more than his words amazes me, yet most average people do not even know what his theories mean or imply. It has been an interesting week so far. Generally at the end of the year special needs students have IEP’s which is a lot of paper work. Each day a new pile of folders and forms and choices about what direction to send a student. Many of the pieces of paper are meaningless but still required as you proceed with paperwork. Many statements made are simple to fulfill federal and state requirements. I am always amazed thinking back how simply it used to be sitting down with parents and discussing their child and needs. Now a wrong word and lawyers are involved and advocates and rooms of people and what is accomplished? All the words are spelled correctly and the child still receives service and maybe just maybe will progress.

 

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” Henry Ford

 

Several summer ago I had a student for biology. The young man who I was working with that summer would try and try and could not pass quizzes and tests. He would try but nothing seemed to work he kept having problems with tests and quizzes. It was a note from a professor and a bit of pondering that came up with a simply answer. What about not using paper and pencil tests. I set up quizzes in power point and flashed them on the wall nearly eight foot tall. First quiz he had 100% on vocabulary. This was in comparison to 20% he was getting on standard quizzes. For the rest of summer school I would scan and put work on the screen and he passed with a good solid B. 

 

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Alva Edison

 

I recalled a sign in Fort Myers Florida at the winter home of Thomas Edison out in his work shop there is a display of a trash can with hundreds thousands of trashed light bulbs and in the display the one that worked. It isn’t the failures we need to look at but the successes; it is about what worked with that light bulb and with this boy. Solving problems we often look at failure for answers and that is why we continue to fail.

 

            “You can never cross a stream the same way twice” Zen saying

 

Somewhere I have a picture of my son stepping stone to stone in the Toccoa creek as we climbed up toward a water falls. However as you look at the photo you see a fellow trying to step to a stone to keep from falling and getting wet yet in reality he was soaked already having been in the creek numerous times. But it is that moment of success that we see in the photo. It is not the thousand failures or ways that didn’t work Thomas Edison is famous for but the one idea that did light up our world. It is about that one success.             –

 

“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” Jimi Hendrix

 

 In my writing that froze and is locked somewhere in posterity I started with a line from Neil Young and another from Jimi Hendrix. Today as I finish up I am leaving with this one, and with Neil Young playing in the back ground it is hard not to pull a line from his melancholy.

 

“In the field of opportunity its plowing time again there ain’t no way of telling if these seeds will rise or when” Neil Young

 

As I sit writing thinking all we can do is try making an effort use those times and things that do not work as tools to build and answers will come. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and to always give thanks.

namaste

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